You Can’t Stop The Signal, Mal

Posted on by accordingtohoyt

As most of you guys know for many years now, Glenn Reynolds, of instapundit (where I post as the “night DJ” most nights) had done a weekly column in USA Today for years.

Frankly in light of a few off-putting moves over the years, the fact they still published the boss was one of the things that I held onto as a sign there was still some sanity at the USA Today, and it made me less p*ssed off whenever I got a “free” copy at my hotel room.

For the first, time ever, they refused to run his column. So he ran it unedited on his own blog.

Needless to say, it involved the Hunter Biden story. Which is, of course, something we peasants can’t be allowed to know in detail, because if we did, we’d also know the Big Guy is snugly kept in Fascist China’s pocket and that a vote for Biden is a vote to subjugate the US to China.

I find it interesting they decided to do this to Glenn, who has more than once proved the power of the New Media. Not the social media, not the mass media, but those of us, tyros, and independents who do this because we care about the truth. We also care about reality. Let’s show these would-be-aristoi there are unintended consequences. Let’s Streisand Effect them.

So, below I’m reproducing the full text of the boss’s column. And I ask you, all of you who have blogs, to do the same. Sure only one or two people might see it on your blog. But it’s not the size of the pebble thrown into the ocean: it’s the size of the ripples.

Ripple away. They can’t stop the signal, Mal.

BIG TECH BURNED BY BIDEN BLUNDER

Glenn Harlan Reynolds

In my 2019 book, The Social Media Upheaval, I warned that the Big Tech companies — especially social media giants like Facebook and Twitter — had grown into powerful monopolists, who were using their power over the national conversation to not only sell ads, but also to promote a political agenda. That was pretty obvious last year, but it was even more obvious last week, when Facebook and Twitter tried to black out the New York Post’s blockbuster report about emails found on a laptop abandoned by Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s son Hunter.

The emails, some of which have been confirmed as genuine with their recipients, show substantial evidence that Hunter Biden used his position as Vice President Joe Biden’s son to extract substantial payments from “clients” in other countries. There are also photos of Hunter with a crack pipe, and engaging in various other unsavory activities. And they demolished the elder Biden’s claim that he never discussed business with his son.

That’s a big election-year news story. Some people doubted its genuineness, and of course it’s always fair to question a big election-year news story, especially one that comes out shortly before the election. (Remember CBS newsman Dan Rather’s promotion of what turned out to be forged memos about George W. Bush’s Air National Guard service?)

But the way you debate whether a story is accurate or not is by debating. (In the case of the Rather memos, it turned out the font was from Microsoft Word, which of course didn’t exist back during the Vietnam War era.) Big Tech could have tried an approach that fostered such a debate. But instead of debate, they went for a blackout: Both services actually blocked links to the New York Post story. That’s right: They blocked readers from discussing a major news story by a major paper, one so old that it was founded by none other than Alexander Hamilton.

I wasn’t advising them — they tend not to ask me for my opinion — but I would have advised against such a blackout. There’s a longstanding Internet term called “the Streisand effect,” going back to when Barbara Streisand demanded that people stop sharing pictures of her beach house. Unsurprisingly, the result was a massive increase in the number of people posting pictures of her beach house. The Big Tech Blackout produced the same result: Now even people who didn’t care so much about Hunter Biden’s racket nonetheless became angry, and started talking about the story.

As lefty journalist Glenn Greenwald wrote in The Intercept, Twitter and Facebook crossed a line far more dangerous than what they censored. Greenwald writes: “Just two hours after the story was online, Facebook intervened. The company dispatched a life-long Democratic Party operative who now works for Facebook — Andy Stone, previously a communications operative for Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, among other D.C. Democratic jobs — to announce that Facebook was ‘reducing [the article’s] distribution on our platform’: in other words, tinkering with its own algorithms to suppress the ability of users to discuss or share the news article. The long-time Democratic Party official did not try to hide his contempt for the article, beginning his censorship announcement by snidely noting: ‘I will intentionally not link to the New York Post.’”

“Twitter’s suppression efforts went far beyond Facebook’s. They banned entirely all users’ ability to share the Post article — not just on their public timeline but even using the platform’s private Direct Messaging feature.”

“Early in the day, users who attempted to link to the New York Post story either publicly or privately received a cryptic message rejecting the attempt as an ‘error.’ Later in the afternoon, Twitter changed the message, advising users that they could not post that link because the company judged its contents to be ‘potentially harmful.’ Even more astonishing still, Twitter locked the account of the New York Post, banning the paper from posting any content all day and, evidently, into Thursday morning.”

This went badly. The heads Facebook and of Twitter, Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey, are now facing Senate subpoenas,the RNC has filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission, arguing that Twitter’s action in blacking out a damaging story constituted an illegal in-kind donation to the Biden Campaign, and most significantly, everyone is talking about the story now, with many understandably assuming that if the story were false, it would have been debunked rather than blacked out.

CNN’s Jake Tapper tweeted:  ”Congrats to Twitter on its Streisand Effect award!!!” Big Tech shot itself in the foot, and it didn’t stop the signal.

Regardless of who wins in November, it’s likely that there will be substantial efforts to rein in Big Tech. As Greenwald writes, “State censorship is not the only kind of censorship. Private-sector repression of speech and thought, particularly in the internet era, can be as dangerous and consequential. Imagine, for instance, if these two Silicon Valley giants united with Google to declare: henceforth we will ban all content that is critical of President Trump and/or the Republican Party, but will actively promote criticisms of Joe Biden and the Democrats. 

“Would anyone encounter difficulty understanding why such a decree would constitute dangerous corporate censorship? Would Democrats respond to such a policy by simply shrugging it off on the radical libertarian ground that private corporations have the right to do whatever they want? To ask that question is to answer it.”

“To begin with, Twitter and particularly Facebook are no ordinary companies. Facebook, as the owner not just of its massive social media platform but also other key communication services it has gobbled up such as Instagram and WhatsApp, is one of the most powerful companies ever to exist, if not the most powerful.”

He’s right. And while this heavyhanded censorship effort failed, there’s no reason to assume that other such efforts won’t work in the future. Not many stories are as hard to squash as a major newspaper’s front page expose during an presidential election.

As I wrote in The Social Media Upheaval, the best solution is probably to apply antitrust law to break up these monopolies: Competing companies would police each other, and if they colluded could be prosecuted under antitrust law. There are also moves to strip them of their immunity under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects them from being sued for things posted or linked on their sites on the theory that they are platforms, not publishers who make publication decisions. And Justice Clarence Thomas has recently called for the Supreme Court to revisit the lower courts’ interpretation of Section 230, which he argues has been overbroad. A decade ago there would have been much more resistance to such proposals, but Big Tech has tarnished its own image since then.

Had Facebook and Twitter approached this story neutrally, as they would have a decade ago, it would probably already be old news to a degree — as Greenwald notes, Hunter’s pay-for-play efforts were already well known, if not in such detail — but instead the story is still hot. More importantly, their heavy handed action has brought home just how much power they wield, and how crudely they’re willing to wield it. They shouldn’t be surprised at the consequences.

366 thoughts on “You Can’t Stop The Signal, Mal”

  2. Mr. Reynolds is correct as far as he goes. Had the latest spit ball effort (e.g. ‘russia!!!!!!!!!!’) been around, he may very well have pointed out that such ‘disinformation’ does not pass the sniff test.

    ANY foreign nation-state with such damning information, not only on the son of a potential prez, but the potential prez hizself, would have done their damndest to KEEP IT HIDDEN. It’s too good a lever to shift policy, etc, in directions they would have preferred.

    Given that, would the previously alleged interference on behalf of a businessman be more useful than on the professional-politician-candidate with a multi-decade history of corruption?

    1. They can’t keep it hidden because Crackhead McStripperbang is unreliable.
      Look, you have to understand with the left, we’re dealing iwth decades of corruption they kept absolutely hidden. They’ve been in a protected environment. They expect it to continue. Why shouldn’t they?
      So they’re not adapted to a free market or a free press.

      1. There’s a dude saying that Hunter released it on purpose, because he is terrified of Joe, and Joe as president, but has trouble finding the courage to outright testify.

        1. Rush is apparently one of the people suggesting this as a possibility.

          I can see how it might work. Hunter sees himself as an important part of the cash flow – cultivating the connections that generate the cash – who then has to hand over a large chunk of the payoffs to his father. And it might be that he feels he got pushed into this role against his wishes, and also hates the constant comparisons of the screw-up son – i.e. himself, against his dead “hero” brother. To top it off, Dad might have been having an affair with then-future Step-Mom while Mom was still alive. Leaving this stuff where it could be found would be a way for him to passively strike back at his dad.

          But it’s only one of many competing theories. And the “He’s an idiot crack head!” theory has some pretty strong arguments in favor of.

          1. Seems like the ones most useful are ‘crackhead’ and ‘Russian disinfo’, so most repeated.

            Rebellion/cry for help is less useful, so rarer.

            Democrats leaped right to ‘disinfo’, seem to have ignored the opportunity to call it domestic fraud or Trump sourced.

            What is the dog that hasn’t barked?

            I haven’t seen it pointed out that Hunter screwed many women; it is possible that one of them had access, a desire for revenge, and no longer saw an upside in having connections to Joe Biden. If he has gone senile, Dr. Jill Biden is alleged to want to manage him as a route to power, but that is less of an option to women who have only had a direct connection to Hunter. Of course, this would mean confidence that Joe was senile before April of 2020.

            1. Hunter dropped off the laptop. The receipt has his signature. So I’m very skeptical of the idea of a woman arranging this.

                1. Fox had it and PJ or Twitchy had a photo of it with a shaky Hunter signature.
                  Shop said it was three things, one unfixable. Tossed for recycling or some such
                  one had a bad keyboard (iirc one ordered for later pick-up) and loaner keyboard provided (and it was never returned)
                  Laptop was bad enough off to need drive salvaged and that was left behind.
                  Supposedly Hunter’s lawyer called a few days in on this circus, requesting the return of the laptop. . . yeah.

                  1. The shop owner couldn’t have returned it even if he’d wanted to. FBI took it last December.

                    I’ve seen a few theories why they’ve been sitting on it. The obvious answer is “trying to bury it to help Biden”. ILOH suggested that someone with pull wanted to blackmail Biden if he won (or as he put it, what J Edgar might have done). I’ve also seen a suggestion that it has evidence against others that the FBI is investigating, and DoJ is worried about tipping off the other targets if they move against Hunter too soon.

                    2. If the FBI had done anything with it last December, we’d have been hearing for the last nearly-a-year how Trump is a dictator because he took out the guy he was “really afraid of” with dirty tricks, and he’s corrupted the FBI.

                    3. Maybe, maybe not with regards to hearing about it. Some interesting items have been noted about it. It’s been noted that a signature linked to the laptop happens to be the guy who runs the kiddie porn group at the FBI. And it’s also been noted that the department linked to money laundering also appears to be tied to the laptop. The former would likely (based on what we’ve heard) quickly get what they need to go to court. But the latter might require some time to build a case depending on how wide of a net they need to cast.

                    4. The former would likely (based on what we’ve heard) quickly get what they need to go to court.

                      ???

                      Stopping organized abuse of minors usually takes a ton of time, if you’re trying to get everybody involved rather than just the guy who had physical possession.

            2. They had no objection to “Russian disinformation” when it blackened Trump’s name in 2016, so they ought forego complaints now.

              For that matter, the email is corroborated by others in that email chai and letters in that laptop correlate with the Secret Service travel logs. Thus even if it is fake it is accurate, a standard the Dems have previously defended.
              –

              1. Separate rules for thee and for me has always been the modus operandi for those on the left.
                Equal treatment? How silly of you. Strict enforcement of every rule for conservatives, but extremely loose interpretation of those same rules when it concerns one of their own.
                In their version of reality the only sin is not the crimes they commit, but only the mistake of letting the masses learn of it.

              2. But the rule is “Who, whom?” It doesn’t mean the same thing when they do to us what they complain about our doing to them.

          2. From what has leaked so far, Hunter has had half his ill-gotten gains siphoned off to “Pop” for 30 years. Given the known mysterious payments from Moscow and that $50k/mo income from the Burisma board, that goes a long way to answer the question “How does 47 years of public office yield that many millions in net worth?” – and yet he’s the family back sheep, subject of public humiliation, no high place in the campaign as Trump gave his kids.

            Combine that with the classic addictive personality that redirects all fault elsewhere and you have plenty of reason to start dropping clue buckets around town, just to show Daddy who is the f-up.

            1. Yep, there are reasons. They make sense, and I’d believe them in most any other circumstance. The reason I don’t is simple.

              Don’t trust the crackhead.

              It’s simple. Crackhead wants to get high. Most, if not all, of his energies flow to this. Addicts have simplified their lives down to a shocking degree- those not familiar with it would be anyway. Using the laptop as a means to show up Daddy dearest is a few steps too far for your average crackhead. And Hunter does not show the signs of a high functioning crackhead (and trust me, “high functioning” ain’t all that high- more of a “he’s high, but can remain functional enough to complete a transaction for delivery pizza- barely”).

              So he spilled his beer on the laptop. Gotta get that fixed. Then he got high. And the laptop wasn’t so important anymore. This, to me, is a much more believable scenario. And treads closer to the facts we know with fewer assumptions. Until more evidence comes to light, that’s the one I’m going with.

              1. I’m not disagreeing, but I wonder at the applicability of the crackhead observations to “crackhead with more money than he can possibly spend on hookers and blow even when Pop gets half”. Any retail level normal crackhead in possession of a laptop pawns or fences it to get money to pay to get high. Hunter has the means to get high any time with zero impact on his standard of living.

                How much of the normal addict behavior is resource driven, and how much of that is applicable to a post-scarcity crackhead?

                1. Well, it’s not a significant sample size. But even given the crackhead that is being taken care of, and doesn’t have to scrounge, is still driven by his demon. The crackhead life is very simple. He’s either high, or working on his next high.

                  The addiction doesn’t care if its human sheath has a family. A job. Hobbies, responsibilities, other wants and desires. If what it takes to get that next high is dancing nekkid in the snow, that is what will happen. The long hours of “not high” are just on the path to the next one. And Hunter was being managed, of this I have no doubt.

                  I just can’t see anything relatively complex working out for him. Getting back at daddy by some convoluted method… nah.

                  That said, I am aware that we don’t have a lot of info here. I could be *way* off. We’ll see as the rest of the evidence dribbles out in the next couple of weeks or so.

                2. I suspect Hunter was kept on a (relatively) tight financial leash — the Biden Syndicate obviously wouldn’t want him to be tossing about unaccounted for cash. That tends to raise questions.

                  So presume a fair portion of Hunter’s share of the rake-off was going to laundering accounts and being sequestered to avoid unwanted questions.

                  Which sort of raises questions: did the son of the Veep, have a security detail? Did they make reports?

                  At any rate, it seems probable Hunter had enough money to supply his habit but probably not enough to enable overdosage.
                  –

                3. FlyingMike I’m kind of surprised that Hunter is still on this side of the grass. An addict of a drug tends to get as much as they can, until finally its too much and then that’s it. An addict with a VERY deep pockets tends not to last too long. Someone is/was trying to keep Hunter from crashing and burning. I doubt it’s the Big Guy except that he’d rather not see the golden goose go bye bye. Mom (step mom actually)? She seems to have her hands full keeping the Big Guy from eating too much paste.

              2. We could go with the obvious solution that he’s stupid. The whole Biden family seems to be pretty damned stupid.

                1. Yep. But they had a lot of help. They had the right politics. And isn’t it weird how all these scandals keep cropping up in democrat candidates? I mean, I don’t remember Mondale all that well, but I don’t think he was scalping little kids or something.

                  Once the Clinton machine got into office, well, things just got… weird… and kept getting worse. But they had the right (left) politics, so…

                  1. I have to agree about the Clintons they pollute everything they touch.

                    It’s no wonder that the average democrat is so wacky. Theyre the good people and they do all these creepy, bad, and evil things. What must the bad people be doing? Poor buggers are caught up with a bunch of psychopaths. I just wish they weren’t trying to take the rest of us with them.

                    1. Let’s not forget that the MSM tilt toward Dems tends to make their politicians incredibly sloppy, confident that any transgressions can be ignored and disregarded, or even used as tool for bashing the people unearthing the dirt (look back at how the Clinton Machine condemned Republicans for promoting Lewinsky’s services to the Presidency.

                      Credit wear due, look at their attacks on Giuliani for trafficking in child porn — those horrific pictures from Hunter’s laptop.
                      –

                  2. There was stuff going on before. There’s was a movie released a while back that focused on FDR’s “female companion” during an event. We’ve heard plenty about people named Kennedy. I’ve heard that LBJ was smuggling prostitutes into the White House. The difference, I suspect, was that talk radio, Drudge, and Fox News meant that stuff was actually being reported on when the Clinton’s were in office. There may very well have been more corrupt stuff going on earlier. But no one was going to report on it.

                    1. Having mistresses or girlfriends is corrupt, but it’s not as corrupt as a lot of this stuff. Heck, look at Kamala’s resume. How does she even get asked to design a meeting flier, much less trusted with anything important?

                      Obviously, a lot of better candidates were either corrupted and blackmailed to keep them under Party control, or driven away, or never allowed to rise despite good qualifications. Instead, they brought along people who are related to senior party members, or who make great tokens, or who can be easily bent.

                    2. There’s corrupt, there’s lowlife scum, and there’s burn it with fire.

                      Corrupt– taking bribes, being willing to be influenced by someone giving your kids a cute dog, affairs.

                      Lowlife scum– sexually abusing those in your sphere of influence, routinely pressuring your affair to …destroy the physical evidence… tossing people aside when you’re done with them, doing this “hire my son or we’ll cancel your country’s aid” junk. The mysterious way that the EPA/Endangered Species enforcers keep accidentally choosing a course of acting that harms the supposed goal, but drives folks into bankruptcy and their land is bought by allies of the enforcers. Weaponizing tax enforcement and such against people who are opposed but really did do what they’re accused of. Harming the country via neglect for your own interests.

                      Burn it with fire- Epstein. Dead pregnant mistresses. Systematically weaponizing tax enforcement and such against people who didn’t do what they’re accused of. Actively harming the country to advance your interests. *pallets of cash to Iran*

                    3. Sorry, I guess I wasn’t clear enough. My point was that the stuff that we know about is not exactly “normal people” stuff. And that’s just the stuff that we know about, during a period of time in which there was a complicit press. There could be worse stuff that we don’t know about because the press wasn’t interested in revealing it. The Clintons are currently the first big “I can’t believe how corrupt they are” first family, and they just happened to end up in the White House at the same time that the press started to lose control. If JFK had been in office while AM talk radio, Drudge, and Fox News were all in operation, would we have roughly the same view of him? Or would we think of him as being just as slimy as the Clintons?

              3. Gets on a plane, flies to California, Ukraine, China, or DC, picks up a shiny new laptop that syncs with his Apple cloud account, does half a pound of crack, and picking up (repaired, possibly outdated) laptop slides off the to-do list.

                1. Yep. That’s my guess. Crackhead and complicated just don’t live in the same universe.

                  But again, low info. Until new evidence pops up, that’s all we have.

                  1. Agreed. Plus probable poor impulse control and “impairment,” from too many years of too much cocaine.
                    Odds are good he dropped it off, forgot about it, got a new one.

                    1. To be fair, if I were actually rich I might do it, just with ADD.
                      When we were making “a lot of money” for us, I kept buying the same top, storing it and forgetting. So that when we moved I had like 5 copies of one blouse….

      2. They weren’t putting *that* much effort into hiding their activity; I remember enough of it being (briefly) reported in the MSM. The brief exposure let the press rack up “impartiality” points while relying on the fact that the average reader forgets the whole thing after three days unless reminded.

        1. That’s also back during the primaries when the Press was hoping that the people would latch on to one of their Progressive darlings as not-Trump. When they kept splitting the vote and demonstrating their incompetence the Bernie cult started racking up some wins, so the DNC panicked and forced everyone but Biden out of the race.

          1. How bad is it that someone decided to go with the “Never got double digits in a primary until well into This election’s” Gaffemeister Plagiarizing Perjurer Slow Joe was picked to be “The One?
            Even 0bama was no enthused “Never underestimate Joe’s Ability to #^ck this up.”

            1. He painted himself into a corner by promising to name a woman of color as his running mate. There probably weren’t too many people who fit that description, have a power base in the party that makes them useful to the ticket, and would be willing to tie themselves to the mediocrity that is Joe Biden.

              2. The Democrats never worry unduly about candidates’ political skills: they’re just puppets for the party. It’s nice if they’ve political talent but hardly necessary — the MSM will swoon and praise them no matter how ham-fisted the candidates are.

                What Harris brought was a) identity politics and b) the Silicon Valley cash conduit. SV & Hollywood would probably have poured in plenty of moolah regardless but with Harris they knew they had their tool in the White House.

                Remember, she may have scored no delegates, low polls and had an epically mis-managed campaign but those are correctable with the right handlers in place.
                –

                1. Kamala was pushed as the one to watch this campaign cycle… right up until Tulsi Gabbard completely destroyed her in the Dem debates. There’s a part of me that wonders if Biden’s ascendancy was merely a vehicle to allow her another shot at the White House.

                1. Yeah, well, picking Kamala Iulia Gaia Augusta Harris was probably not really in Joe’s best longer term interests, as far as breathing goes.

                  1. On second thought Round-heels Kamala is more in line with Marc Antony than with poor Gaius Iulius.

                    1. I think she’s more Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (aka Caligula) than the other Roman emperors, except perhaps Nero.

                  2. i see three plans mainly:
                    Veep takes over ASAP
                    Veep takes over 2 yrs and 1 day later so two full terms cane be run for after, and “Doctor” Jill’s wish of her doing the running of things for however long they can keep him breathing.

                    1. Imagine the constitutional crisis that would result from their pushing President-elect China-money-Harsniffer out without a pillow to the face before the inauguration.

                      The 25th Amendment does not include the term “-elect” in the text, sand with ACB seated, Roberts is no longer the swing vote, so they can’t just force through a dictated-by-whoever-has-the-Roberts-kompromat decision that the amendment applies to the President-elect.

                    2. If President-elect dies between the Electoral College vote and inauguration, the VP vote remains valid. Come Inauguration Day, the VP-elect becomes VP, and immediately afterward becomes President.

                      Unusual situation, yes, but hardly a constitutional crisis.

                    3. I’ve said it before. Old Joe ‘retires for health reasons’ before Christmas.

                      Avoiding an Epstein-style ‘suicide’ IS a ‘health reason’, after all…

                    4. I think it depends on his health. Hairstylin’ San Fran Nan and other want different things than the others trying to wrest control from her and the “establishment” leftoids, and who gets to stuff their hand up the muppets arse is being fought over behind the scenes.

                    7. To Joel: Right, if Joe passes while not killing himself there’s a clear path. But I did mention no pillow-to-the-face – if President-elect Oil-industry-killer-Joe is alive but not competent, which if post-inauguration would trigger the 25th, what then? Do they prop him up for the swearing-in with his cabinet sitting behind him having the 25th-amendment-trigger paperwork in their coat pockets to immediately file after Kamala gets sworn, so as to read him back into his basement? What if he decides to go for a naked swim in the reflecting pool on December 1st, all the while insisting, “Come on, Man!”, that he’s perfectly fine?

      3. They’ve had so many guardians protecting them, for any number of reasons, that the moment anyone can break past them to the core ideas and thoughts of the political Left…they don’t know how to defend themselves. They haven’t had to, not really.

        This is why they like the current walled gardens of the mainstream media. And they’re trying the same thing with streaming services and indie publication. They can’t compete in a free market-so, make the market not free.

  3. This seems an odd hour to put up a post. I suppose that by the time I return my mailbox will be stuffed.

    BTW – for those otherwise distracted, it seems that the NY Post has learned that Facebook is usig H1B visas to bring in Chinese code writers, people who really know how to write algorithms to suppress unwanted thoughts (I guess those are jobs Americans won’t do):

    Meet your (Chinese) Facebook censors
    China is one of the most censorious societies on earth. So what better place for ­Facebook to recruit social-media censors?

    There are at least half a dozen “Chinese nationals who are working on censorship,” a former Facebook insider told me last week. “So at some point, they [Facebook bosses] thought, ‘Hey, we’re going to get them H-1B visas so they can do this work.’ ”

    The insider shared an internal directory of the team that does much of this work. It’s called Hate-Speech Engineering (George Orwell, call your office), and most of its members are based at Facebook’s offices in Seattle. Many have Ph.D.s, and their work is extremely complex, involving machine learning — teaching “computers how to learn and act without being explicitly programmed,” as the techy Web site DeepAI.org puts it.

    When it comes to censorship on social media, that means “teaching” the Facebook code so certain content ends up at the top of your newsfeed, a feat that earns the firm’s software wizards discretionary bonuses, per the ex-insider. It also means making sure other content “shows up dead-last.”

    Like, say, a New York Post report on the Biden dynasty’s dealings with Chinese companies.

    To illustrate the mechanics, the insider took me as his typical Facebook user: “They take what Sohrab sees, and then they throw the newsfeed list into a machine-learning algorithm and neural networks that determine the ranking of the items.”

    Facebook engineers test hundreds of different iterations of the rankings to shape an optimal outcome — and root out what bosses call “borderline content.” …
    –

    1. Facebook is using H1B visas to bring in Chinese code writers, people who really know how to write algorithms to suppress unwanted thoughts (I guess those are jobs Americans won’t do):

      Good. That’s one job Americans should never do.

      No, I don’t consider much of the college-educated upper-middle-class American anymore. There is a reason I married a non-college-educated woman.

      They’re much less likely to be whiney, feminist, c*nts.

      1. Wow, Herbn. Just wow.

        As someone who is upper middle class, educated, feminist, from.a family with 9 generations of military service to this country (going on 10 – my nephew is Marine reserves) and is a lifelong conservative, I’d call you a creep, but that might be too nice.

        1. Er… What?
          As for “feminist” it’s incompatible with being “conservative” or “libertarian.”
          I don’t know how old you are, but feminist today is indistinguishable from “Marxist.”
          So perhaps you’re dim or uninformed.
          Perhaps you are a troll.
          I’m going to go work. The commenters can figure it out.

        2. Feel free. I’ve been called worse by better people.

          I didn’t say everyone was, I said “less likely”. It’s a risk game. The cost of that kind of woman is so high even a few percentage points change in odds increases the actual risk a good deal.

            1. Yep. My day job is all about realizing risk isn’t odds; risk is the product of the event’s odds and cost. Then you sum all of those products to get the expected outcome.

              You can get some fun ones on that. An interview question our C++ team uses is this:

              You can roll a die up to three times. After the third time or if you quit before the third time, you get $1 for what you rolled on your last roll. What is the expected value of this game (or phrased in the most quant way, what is the correct price to play this game)?

              1. *is curious*

                My “as soon as I read it and thought a moment” answer is:
                Stop for anything over 3 on the first roll, and three or higher on the second.

              2. I get $4.625 assuming that I must roll at least once, and that I get to see the current result before deciding to roll again. This with a strategy of “Keep what I got if I get a 4-6; roll again if I get a 1-3”

                If I don’t get to see what I roll before making a roll-again/don’t-roll-again decision I get $3.5.

              3. For those who are interested in the solution:

                For a single die game, the expected value is (1+2+3+4+5+6)/6 = 3.5.

                On the two die game, you will not re-roll a 4+ because it exceeds the expected value of a third die, so the expected value is (3.5+3.5+3.5+4+5+6)/6=4.25.

                So, on the three dice version, you will not re-roll 5 or 6 because the expected value of roll 2 is 4.25. This makes the expected value of the first die, and thus the game, (4.25+4.25+4.25+4.25+5+6)/6=4.67.

                So, the correct price is the game is $4.67.

                1. I came up with about the same answer without doing any math.

                  Then did some math to confirm it. Not as formal as yours.

                2. I see my mistake now: If the first die comes up ‘4’ I should roll again instead of standing pat, because the expected value of rolling once or twice more is 4.25 (>4).

              4. Interesting, that you reference ruin since that’s really the only thing that matters. When there is the potential of ruin you simply shouldn’t bet, but then I’m an options trader on my own account so I have to worry about that. I buy them using the Kelly criterion to calculate bet size and never, ever write them.

        3. As for 9 generations of military service:

          1. Where did you do YOUR drops? After all, you’re a feminist, you don’t want to be counting the military service of men to puff yourself up, you want to have done it on your own.
          2. In three generations my family has over 70 man-years of service. I’m the piker of the bunch at 9 years, 2 months, and 2 days.
          3. My family’s history of service is old enough my sister is eligible to join the DAR.

            1. Aeh, lots of people could be in the DAR. Mayflower, too. I feel bad about not having joined either, because my grandmother put a lot of time into proving the genealogy. But the chapter around here is not active, and I’m not going to pay good money just to say I’m in.

          2. As a genealogical game with full inclusion of aunts and uncles in each generation, I think it would be hard to not find someone in each gen with military service.

            If she’s saying direct line, well, I guess that proves her WWII ancestor was not 4F, and her Vietnam ancestor was not a rat bastard commie hippie bastard bastard draft dodger bastard.

          3. My wife would qualify for all three of the DAR, Daughters of the Confederacy, and the Mayflower Compact. She’s singularly unimpressed by all of that…

            1. I remember the DAR ladies showing up in their white gloves when I was a child, I think it had to do with the country club where my father played golf, They were giving my mother a hard time about being, you know, Irish Catholic, which she ended by pointing out her father was eligible for the Society of the Cincinnati as the direct heir of an officer in Clare’s Regiment who fought at Savannah.

              I never served. My father talked me out of it. He ended up with a battlefield commission at Pusan in Korea because all the junior officers were dead. His family didn’t have the same all for king and country thing my mother’s cloud has.

              1. Yeah, i remember DAR ‘ladies’ giving us heck for being ‘white trash’ and then i point out my direct ancestor signed the Declaration….

              2. Jayzus. I’m doubly glad me family ran away when they did! Gave us plenty of time to get involved in the IRB/IRA, the Invincibles, and have a good relationship with the lads in Chill Mhaighneann. 😀

                1. My crowd were on both sides, best place to be in a civil war. My grandfather won the MC with the Connaught Rangers in Salonica and later went into the 2nd Sikhs of the Frontier Force so he missed the mutiny in ‘22, My Uncle won the Service Medal (1917-1921) with bar.for being out in the East Limerick Flying Column of the RA and then in the Anti Treaty IRA after independence. He later married one of DeValera’s secretaries and came to the US “on the run”Family get togethers were always interesting. I have both sets of medals.

              3. My college friend, who just passed away, was had a Masters, but because her husband’s family promised them jobs if they moved to Cape May and then moved out for (allegedly) greener pastures, she found herself working as a housekeeper in a beachfront hotel. Then she got into genealogy and discovered she qualified for DAR. I got the impression they were rather snooty toward her until they realized just how good she was. Eventually she became an officer in the local chapter and valued at the state level.

                She and my husband confirmed I could qualify from both sides of the family. Just haven’t done anything about it.

                1. We qualify for DAR from multiple routes through the family too. Sisters each have copies of all the birth, and marriage certificates tracing all the way back along one line on our paternal side. Rumor has it mom’s cousin has the same documentation tracing all the way back too. She just hasn’t bothered to get a copy of it for us girls, because paternal copy is fact in hand. Our interest wasn’t dealing with the organization. OTOH scholarships for any of their daughters …

                  As far as the Daughters of the Confederacy, …. well, traceable branches of the family skedaddled west before the ACW, to homesteads of *economic opportunities*, and stayed on them. Homesteads in Montana and Oregon Territories.

                  * Not that any got rich off of the land (darn it).

              4. My dad (Korea) didn’t talk to me for almost two months after I enlisted. As Basic approached, he bent, a little.

            3. Mayflower? Johnny-come-latelys. . . .

              Descended from many of the first founders of Quebec, myself. One of my ancestors married an Indian bride because there were no white women around. (Then she died, and he remarried to a Frenchwoman, and all his children came from the second union.)

            4. One of my favorite kerfluffles in the ‘80’s. Or ‘90’s, when I was living in the Baltimore-Washington area, was a fit of honking outrage the Left threw over the continued existence of the Daughters of the Confederacy…which vanished like a match flame in a hurricane when it started to come out how many BLACK members there were.

            5. No surprise there. Googlag doesn’t want its slaves learning about rebellion and proud of being descended from rebels.

        4. Allow me to point out something you may have missed in his comment.

          He has a wife.

          Which means that while he definitely cares about her opinion of him, the opinion of a random stranger on the Internet, whom he doesn’t know from Adam Eve (I’m assuming that you’re a woman since you’re using the name Valeria), well, he probably cares more about whether it’s raining or sunny in Tokyo right now than he cares about your attempt to Karen him.

          If you have an actual argument to make against his opinion, make it. Your ad hominem attempt is not an argument. Also, since I haven’t ever seen you commenting here before*, I have no way to evaluate whether or not you’re telling the truth about being a lifelong conservative, or even about your family’s alleged 9 generations of military service to the United States. If you are telling the truth about that, then hopefully some of the other responses to your comment (e.g., Sarah Hoyt’s response about how “feminist” is basically a synonym for “Marxist” these days) will help you understand why I’m skeptical about your claim to be a conservative at least until I see some evidence beyond an attempt to use shaming in place of an argument.

          * If you’re new to this blog, then welcome. We sometimes get into some pretty rough-and-tumble debate, but as long as you’re arguing in good faith and don’t try to pretend that insults are an argument, you’ll probably do well here. Those who are just trying to troll, or drive by and shout insults without making any actual logical points… don’t tend to last long. Hopefully you’re the former rather than the latter.

            1. Yeah. No prior post history under that name, and didn’t come back for any followups? Driveby.

              1. *snaps fingers*

                THE CAT!

                That’s why I thought I recognized the name, but found the comment out of character, even though I couldn’t identify what I expected.

            2. It’s impossible to be life long conservative Republican; life begins at conception, and there are periods where it is clearly impossible to have political opinions or to be a registered Republican voter.

              1. You don’t know much about biology. The egg and sperm cells were already alive. A number of things happen at fertilization; ‘life beginning’ is not one of them.

                1. When trying to correct someone about biology, you should probably avoid making a basic blunder like that. Equivocation seldom goes over very well.

                  The gametes are “alive”– but they are not an organism, they are a part of an organism.

                  Life, meaning of the organism under consideration rather than time since formation of a specific sub-cell in a larger organism, begins at conception.

              2. If you will check your Merriam~Webster’s I think you will find that life does not begin at conception, it begins at the point the woman person whose womb is being occupied decides. This may occur at any point from conception up until several days after delivery.
                –

      2. Look to the rising thirty college educated women, though.
        A lot of them have started to see through the lie of feminism/socialism.
        And the ones who go right put me to shame in both deep thought and fervor.
        years ago when older son was complaining about the dating pool, a friend said “They only start shaking off the indoctrination at around 27. but then a good number of htem shake it off VERY thoroughly.”
        They seemt o be right….

        2. Some manage to see through it. Far too many don’t, and become Karens. I’ve had to deal with a few.

        3. It’s going to get harder for college men to meet those women, since the D.P. actively does not want to go. Trade school, yes, liberal arts degree, no. Better odds of catching a useful son-in-law as well.

        4. Number two son left off studying education because of the continually whining women. It’s a real pity since he’s exactly what high school boys need but won’t get. My wife and I are dying to meet the woman who decides she can handle him. She’ll have to be smart and very, very quick.

          For myself, I’m very fond of women but I can’t stand girls.

          1. Also, some 25-year-olds are women while some 50-year-olds are girls. It’s all about mental age (maturity) rather than calendar age.

      3. This depends on their age and their background. In the case of a GenX’er- they’re likely to not be that, for example. And Millenials…well…depends on the Millenials. Only _MOST_ of them are whiney cucks.

        1. And Millenials…well…depends on the Millenials. Only Only _MOST_ of them are whiney cucks.

          *raises hand with thumb and little finger lowered*

          Read between the lines.

          Most of us do seem to have escaped the inane desire to be Properly Recognized by the self-appointed betters, though.

          It seems to confuse a lot of folks because that isn’t limited by political flavor. The stupid proggy social games don’t work any better when the person using them declares they are on the right.

          1. There really does seem to be something that happens when you get the degree. Women with some college (C has 2.5 years) seem to catch entitled feminism at a much, much lower rate than women who finish.

            Maybe it is just how long you stew in it.

            I didn’t survey non-trad versus trad students when I was last dating, but I suspect that non-trad women, even with just one year military or workforce prior to college are much less likely to catch it.

            When the neicphews hit that age I’m going to do my best to get them to work an actual year or two prior to college, although I’m going to steer away from the military.

            1. About a third of women have degrees at all, although given how obnoxiously loud the twerps are I can very easily see them seeming much more numerous. (more common than men) Being loud makes you a target, and I don’t want to play their games, you know? I am getting tired of being scolded for other folks’ bad social experiences, though.

              For the nieces– I’d highly suggest framing it in terms of making sure they know what they want to do, and getting the cheap classes out of the way at a community college or online.
              If it’s framed as avoiding debt, bad decisions and maybe renting in a place that isn’t stupidly expensive, it’s an easier sell.

          2. *raises hand with thumb and little finger lowered*

            Read between the lines.

            I had to actually look at my hand before I got it. Nice and subtle; I like it!

            Also, as long as the palm of your hand faces towards your own face, that one works whether your interlocutor is American or British. 🙂

            1. *bow*

              I have stylistic objections to the more obvious version— and the infamous “Spike uses sign language to respond” scene for Buffy the Vampire Slayer got me to thinking.

        2. Well, with GenX at least university also matter. State schools are safe, ivies are not, and small liberal arts colleges are a crap shoot.

      4. The relentless indoctrination is relentless.

        If the Big Bear is to be believed, as long as the lady in question is merely a passive member of the Church of the Narrative, a confident and capable husband can turn that around. But we can’t all be 6′ tall, good looking, high status, charismatic men (or the converse for the ladies) so knowing your limitations and choosing accordingly is the path of wisdom. And being demonstrably *pleased* and content with said choice. So good on you for that, Mr.N.

        That said, as a highly degreed woman who works with the young uns, I can confirm that the indoctrination designed to create young men and women (in the latter case, whiny, feminist, [entitled, resentful, ignorant, obnoxious] word replaced*) has been worsening. With predictable unhappiness expressed by both sexes in each other. It may affect the ladies more obviously, but it’s not just a problem for them.

        The D.P. did a research product on before-and-after ordinary normal girl goes to college and her classmates were unnerved. I think it takes a seriously Odd gal to be mule-headed enough to buck the trend. I’d be interested in any similar project regarding the boys.

        *Good on Oz for using that word for both sexes. I note in the U.S. calling someone a dick is not even mildly profane.

    2. I’m pretty sure it’s worse than that since the American tech companies developed the technology in the first place for China and are now bringing it back here after what is essentially a large scale beta test. Don’t be evil ended a long time ago.

      1. When updating Beloved Spouse on the news we agreed that the tech, once developed for China, would inevitably be brought stateside.

        On further consideration it seems likely that was always the intent – use China to beta develop the tech, then deploy it here. I have little doubt Google is on that same path.
        –

    3. While I am sure there are a lot of software engineers in the Middle Kingdom which includes Wuhan where the Covid-19 virus originated working at the PhD level on various innocuous things other than the Great Firewall on behalf of Chinese State Security, imagine how some hypothetical foreign intelligence service with employees working at that level, whom they had vetted and absolutely trusted, might see that job listing and say to themselves, “Gee, self, wouldn’t God-Emperor Winnie the Pooh smile very kindly upon me if I was able to get a pile of Chinese State Security employees jobs working for Mark Zuckerberg on controlling what the foreign devils are allowed to see?”

  4. Pingback: Go read: Can’t Stop The Signal | The Elegant Ungulate

    1. I was sleeping alright until some wag yesterday pointed out we’ll find out in two weeks how big of a mess this is.

      *looks at sleep chart which is hour short, good night’s rest, hour short, hour short, good night’s rest, hour short, hour short, sleep what sleep*

      Monday Friday…..

      1. I’ve had horrid insomnia.

        I guess spending at least an hour a day mentally rehearsing to commit large scale killing when your political enemies start a civil war, preparing to die in the end, and worrying about who will take care of the cats after will do that to a person.

          1. I think it keeps me up because it taps into a part of me I keep very tight wraps on, to the point of often putting up with things I shouldn’t out of concern of letting that part out.

            If I have to let it out to that degree, I doubt I will ever get it completely back in. I find too much pleasure in what it does.

                1. It’s amazing how many ways a song like this can talk to you– I appreciate how Skilllet tends to recognize and respect the costs of actions.
                  Especially since this is a pretty basic “head bang and scream” type song, that it doesn’t glorify nuke it all is nice.

        2. I worry about the cats.
          This will sound bad, but it’s the only reason I’m glad that Greebo is gone and beyond suffering.
          He wasn’t a pretty cat, and he didn’t like PEOPLE in general. He liked me. He’d never UNDERSTAND. And he was old, with cataracts and starting to get arthritis.
          I miss him terribly, but maybe I’ll see him again, if I’ve been good.
          I worry, though, for Havey the dim and Valeria the wounded.

          1. I’m an Agnostic, by which I mean ‘somebody whom all religions and sects bother to some extent’. That said, I do firmly believe that the Creator is more interested in Love than in sterile rules, and that the Love of your fur children that have passed will be counted in your favor, for their sake if not yours.

          2. You do not have to be good, though you ought to keep trying, for everyone’s sake, and in gratitude. Someone Else was Good enough for you.

            You have to be faithful.

            You seem to have that one down.

            Whether we and our friends in fur shall ever be reunited, or should be, or we would want this, or some other possibility beyond the bounds of time and space is unknown. But having some taste of loving parenthood on both ends, as it were, it seems pretty likely. And however it *does* turn out it will be joy and peace for both of you.

              1. Depends on “Believe”
                Theist but He ain’t the One?
                Still some good message in there.
                Atheist and he ain’t no one but some guy’s kid?
                Still some good message there.
                Atheist and claim he never existed?
                ?? GO away, kid. ya bother me (~_^)

                1. I’m traditional Jewish. so I don’t believe in Jesus but definitely in the Torah even if, my guilty sin, I don’t observe most. I won’t convert because I feel that it would be an insult to my family.

                  I like the ideas said about Jesus but don’t believe in him as a divine being.

                  G-d spoke to us (the Jewish nation) at Mt. Sinai. He redeemed us from bondage in Egypt. My soul along with all the souls of Israel was at Sinai. I won’t breach that Covenant.

                  1. I’ve had knobs claim there was no Jesus. The fact the Romans have record and the Jews have “Back around the year 3760 or so we had some guy raise a ruckus” is wholly a fabrication of Christians (though they also sorta claimed Jews may have made him up for some reason, but by then, the paintbrush used to paint themselves into the corner was so wide, Flat Earthers would say “Dude, that’s a little out there”)

                    1. Sounds like a permutation of the “no non-religious sources” or “no unbiased sources” for Jesus’ existence, which was false but defensible back in… I think it was the 1940s when it was getting a big push?

                      The stuff was HARD to get, and the translations were iffy, and if you could travel to like five different places it was really impressive.

                      What was usually left out was that very, very few ancient historic figures have evidence if you remove … well, basically anything from the people who care about keeping records about them. (Defined widely enough that Josephus is not evidence because his stuff was preserved by Christians.)
                      For example, Pontius Pilate failed that one until the 1960s.
                      https://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2017/04/14/good-friday-the-pilate-stone/

                      On a side note:
                      the naming standards back then are enough to drive a writer to drink.

                    2. I have literally known atheists who claim that the pagan references to Jesus are not actual evidence because they agree with the Christian sources.

                    3. *laughs*
                      OK, now that one is even more epic than the “this line sometimes has Christian honorifics/comments added, so the whole thing including the un-added-to line way before it are fake.”

                      Reminds me of the folks talking about how we can’t have a new supreme court justice until “a new president takes office.”

                    4. OK, I was going to see if I could get any more details, found this:

                      https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/did-jesus-exist
                      The mythicists
                      The idea that Jesus of Nazareth is a fictional character, like Batman, is a fringe view among historians. This view, commonly called mythicism, was first argued seriously by the quirky nineteenth-century German critic Bruno Bauer. Karl Marx was one of Bauer’s students, and after mythicism became popularized by Arthur Drew’s 1909 book The Christ Myth, this view became the de facto belief among communists. The Soviet Union mandated the teaching of mythicism in public schools and banned materials that attempted to refute it (Leslie Houlden, Jesus: The Complete Guide, 729).

                      But scholars, both religious and nonreligious, outside the former USSR reject mythicism. John Dominic Crossan, who co-founded the skeptical Jesus Seminar, denies that Jesus rose from the dead but not that he was an historical person. He writes, “That [Jesus] was crucified is as sure as anything historical can ever be” (Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, 145).

                    5. I presume the responses to Emily are merely of the manner of general discussion of a topic and that nobody actually understands her to have been arguing that she does not believe there was any such historical person as Jesus? It ought be clear to all non-idiots that she was merely stating non-acceptance of claims as to the divinity of the historical Jesus.

                      Similarly, one can recognize the existence of a Sixth-Century prophet named Moe without accepting his prophecies, or recognize that there was a Joseph Smith without concluding his writings were divinely revelation.

                      Ought there be room in this blog for generosity in granting good faith (heh) to participants’ hastily composed comments?
                      –

                    7. Given the way discussions around here oft gang agley, I thought it prudent to put in a circuit-breaker there.
                      –

                    8. Emily has been perfectly reasonable, that I’ve seen– mine was SUPPOSED to be going to the comment re: “there was never anybody called Jesus” where the flat earthers were finding them a bit out there. Did it get threaded funny, again?

                      The whole “never was such a guy” is sort of a “thing,” usually dumb kids rebelling against their parents or StrawParents.

                      …I would say I can’t imagine someone of reasonable intelligence on either side not knowing that the historic Jewish authorities of the area recognized a rebel rabbi existed and disagreed in line with their faiths re: is He who He says, but this is the internet. If I said such a thing, it’d summon such a creature. And we might break something with all the folks linking Jewish and Christian and “can they both lose?” type historians showing otherwise.

                    9. Emily is a candidate for sainthood —- she’s been married to me for almost 20 years. 😎

                    10. Well, whatever was off about the comment threading earlier, it’s now showing my comments correctly as in response to :
                      JP Kalishek says:October 23, 2020 at 9:36 pm
                      rather than Emily.

        3. IF we survive this election, because I’m NOT sure we can clean the rolls, and I’m not sure the young will wake up fast enough, the work of the next four years is getting ourselves to a safer area. And ABSOLUTELY hiding our place of residence. (including a forwarding address in Denver.)

          1. Not sure if there’s anywhere safe in that area- and for four years I lived in Firestone and Frederick, working down in the People’s Democratic Republic of Boulder. Maybe up in Wyoming… Closest “safe” area I’d say I know for positive is the area that the Wandreys are wintering at down in Glen Rose, TX.

            1. I think Wyoming is too high for Our Gracious Hostess. A close college friend taught at UW at Laramie, but moved to Tennessee a few years ago.

              Safe, low elevation, maybe parts of Texas (if it stays Red), else the Dakotas.

              I think we’re relatively safe east of the Cascades in Oregon, assuming the tribes don’t throw in with the Lefties. Recent events (the damage to the OR Historical outfit and destruction/vandalism of a bunch of important artifacts) suggest that at least for now, we’ll have a common enemy.

                1. I really love it, for all that the social opportunities for a single woman of 40 (and my religion and, referencing the above, with a college degree–although I escaped 97% of the indoctrination, and lost the brief 3% when I discovered this blog and Larry’s blog 😀 ) suuuuuck.

                  And the winters suck. But they do keep the population low and the more usual idiocy to a relative minimum. Although as I eye the tiny, tiny local school and just how BADLY the kids coming out of there and also the slightly-larger neighboring town’s school, the lefty indoctrination is strong even in a ghost town in Wyoming, sigh. But most of those kids either move away, or they move away, fail, come back, and either fall into the local idiocy of substance abuse or they grow a bit of sense.

                  (My youngest brother has been APPALLED at how bad the leftist crap is even at the community college he’s attending in Casper. I took the opportunity to remind him that this is why I was pitching trade school at him, and have been for years, heh.)

                  But yes, you and the fam should move back to Wyoming if you can. But be aware that property prices are rather sucky (ie, high given the trade-off of “have to drive at least an hour to get to decent grocery stores” that exists in most of the state, lol.)

                    1. Probably not terribly different, in all honesty. I don’t remember if 82 was a boom or bust year, but if it was a bust year, definitely not terribly different, heh. (Like most Wyoming towns, Casper is doing okay, despite bust, but there’s still a lot of empty buildings downtown where oil and gas companies had their offices. Still, they’ll be back in some form or other…)

                      Also still not the hole that Rawlins or–even worse–Rock Springs are 😀

                    2. Bust year. It is the year the Texaco refinery shut down. That’s where my dad worked and we moved to El Paso with Texaco. I had just finished at CY and was going to head to Natrona for HS the next year.

                      The mall wasn’t built, nor was the third HS or the civic center.

        4. If I was in your shoes I’d set aside “Red Dawn” scenarios and consider that money is their life’s blood, and you have a scalpel at their jugular. A word here, a suggestion there, creative meeting direction, collecting logins and passwords to the source code repository, and arranging for someone else to take the blame should something be exposed. That is, using their own playbook against them. (for whatever value you assign to “them”)

          “Financial instability” doesn’t have to be a handful of catastrophic failures; a long-enough chain of not-optimal (not necessarily *wrong*) decisions will do the same thing in the end.

          Baud knows, I’ve worked at enough places that bit the dust like that, and I had no idea what was going on at the time.

          2. Sadly, I’m not sure I’m in the right place to do that, although I understand what you mean.

            I have access to our code repository. Hell, I write it, but we’re analysts. I handle no cash and don’t even make the trades on the hedge.

            As for the Red Dawn scenarios, because of where I leave I expect to be confronted at home by this time next summer and face violence or put up one of those pre-printed BLM signs or “We believe” bs things.

            1. If working remotely is an option there are friendlier places. I don’t have that option. If bad things happen in certain places, well, I may have done some good here and there. I try not to make things worse where I’m at, at least.

              Keep your head about you and assess the risks with a clear head. Safe is not something to count on, but risk management is always worth considering. Sometimes it is best to check your assumptions, though. Mine need recalibration fairly regularly among friends. *grin*

            2. > I handle no cash

              Even better! You can stand there and shake your head sadly while Security cleans out someone’s desk.

        1. Maybe you can put oatmeal into pudding bags, and just wear the pudding bags instead of clothes. Or maybe you can write from a bathtub full of oatmeal. (Like put down some Saran wrap or tarps first, so the oatmeal doesn’t go down the drain.)

        2. This too shall pass and pass fairly quickly. In under two weeks we will have a clue. In a few months we will know. If you cannot wait, don’t go alone take a large crowd with you.
          Consider also that you will have moved all of us much closer to the boog. You are valued highly.

  6. Done. Scheduled to be my next nightly blog post.

    (And I happen to be up because thunderboomers had the dogs restless which means that I was woken up several times and…finally made virtue of necessity by getting up.)

  8. The plain fact of the matter is that the media has never been able to control the narrative. This was true in the days of dead tree media. It is even more true now.

    What Big Tech has accomplished with their censorship & banning users is to build their replacements. Gab has survived despite all efforts to kill the platform. MeWe topped 9 million users this week. Parler is growing. YouTube competitors are springing up weekly. They have forgotten their own history.

      1. Enough to really matter, anyway. But any number of things undermined them. We’ve talked bout the more obvious here often, but consider this; in the last few decades, as the level of wealth in Society grew (at least for blue collar people with actual skills) a lot of ‘deplorables’ had the leisure to start reading history. Military history especially. And when you read history, one thing leads to another as you wonder ‘why was it that way’ and ‘what happened after’. So a lot of The Masses that the (pseudo) intellectuals hold in contempt as uneducated learned that much of Teh Narrative was utter pigswill. And the publishing industry had no control over the sale and reading of secondhand books, and paid scant attention to despised niche markets like Military History.

          1. And a fine thing it is to be a reader, just now. My father says its better than the era of pulps with new stuff being churned out as fast as they could print.

            I haven’t the evidence, but should amazon ever collapse completely there are a couple of places I can think of to go still yet. And the market is there. As long as there is internet and it is still wild and free enough (and it is getting harder to control), writers and readers will find each other.

      2. Control? I don’t know. They could suppress a great deal but not everything, and much that they did control was bereft of credibility. Twenty years ago was Bush v. Gore and if they’d been able to control that Bush wouldn’t have won the Florida death count, much less the overall vote that made Florida’s count count.

        Nor could they control the Lewinsky kerfuffle, nor the Gonzalez kidnapping or even the Waco conflagration.

        They could tip the scales, some, as in the 1992 election when they lied about the economy and portrayed George H. W. Bush as nearly as out-of-touch as Biden now is — and even then it took a crazy blathering coot running a third party to haul Billy-Jeff’s worthless ass across the Electoral College finish line.

        They didn’t even actually control voter impressions in 1980 or ’84 (remember how Mondale was “going to pull ahead” any day?) — but they are real good at rewriting History, at drawing targets around their wild shots to put them i the bullseye.
        –

        1. Re rewrites – that’s still them. See the “Strange New Respect” whenever R ex-Presidents say the “correct” thing. Also see the gushing over Reagan at his funeral by the same “impartial” news pukes who were crapping all over him every chance they could get when he was in office, and who danced joyous gloating jigs when they announced his mental decline.

          And it’s frelling everywhere – the current horrible season of Dancing with the Stars had 80s night recently and they were going on and on about how carefree and wonderful the 1980s were – vs. back in the day, that same ABC networks The Day After was a huge multinight miniseries event about how Reagan’s inevitable nuclear war would cause everyone to de a long horrible lingering death, unless everyone joined the “green” anti nuke protestors and worked to surrender the world to the Soviet Union.

          Rewrites is their thing.

            1. Be fair now! A lot of Democrat political hacks damned near did starve during the Reagan Administration. Or worse: have to take honest jobs, the kind where you have to show up and even (shudder) produce results.
              –

          2. “The Day After,” was a paean to optimism compared to “Threads,” and a paragon of scientific accuracy compared to “Testament,” which both came out in the same period. Not saying it was great, but better than those two.
            (“Threads,” was British, and totally depressing, while “Testament ” got critical praise for being a “woman’s movie,” where the aftermath of nuclear war means everybody dies….but genteely and without violence. Just very long, drawn out radiation poisoning without much barfing). “Threads,” depressed me and “Testament,” made me want to throw things at the TV.

            1. Yeah, but after Roots was such a humongous draw in 1977, and then Jimmeh lost to an actor in 1980, the push was on to do something to explicitly show those stupid overflight rubes just exactly what they had done – so in 1983 I remember the hype starting months in advance to drum up viewership and get that Important Message across. The broadcast date was scheduled November 20th,1983, just under one year prior to the 1984 Presidential elections, so it would feed into the start of the campaign and have enough time to make those idiot rubes meekly do the right thing and vote correctly to throw Reagan out.

              So Hollywood and the networks sat back to see how much credit they would be able to claim for defeating that evil monster cowboy actor Ronald Reagan – and Reagan won a landslide of epic proportions in November 1984.

              I think that was my first experience of political Schadenfreude. Good times, good times.

            2. The Showtime remake of On the Beach, starring Armand Assante, Rachel Ward and Blair Brown (among others) very accurately depicted the impact of radiation poisoning, barfing included. It was quite well done.

          3. For those of you who weren’t there — they talked about Reagan in office the way they talk about Trump.

            2. Well, KGB funding, which we saw documented after the fall of the Soviet Union, had to be lower profile than Soros funding is now, so the opposition could not take risks like getting arrested, as no KGB money pool was available for pre-forfeited bail.

    2. Parler seems to be controlled opposition. Joe M (at)StormIsUponUs saw a post he did (equating the Biden 2020 logo to the Three Red Banners of ChiComs) go from 60K views to 6.2K views.

      1. It’s a Safe Space for Conservative, Inc. and whoever they can con into handing over their telephone number in order to follow them there. Even Twitter lets you read peoples tweets without having to hand over your personal info.

        MeWe, Gab, even walled gardens like Social Galactic are more honest.

        1. …except for the trackers that log every click when you go to a Twitter-managed site. Many with names that don’t obviously connect to “Twitter.”

          Like Facebook, once they collect enough clicks, they create a profile, and eventually link you to it, and start marketing that information.

          And, for values of “conspiracy theory nutter”, almost every packet of data that moves in North America, and much of the rest of the world, goes through servers monitored by the NSA, and they have the capability of doing the same thing. By their charter, it’s their *job*, and they’re not hurting for funding.

          1. Abut that …

            Star ‘disinformation’ reporter brags about doxxing Trump supporters & NBC defends it as journalism

            An NBC reporter has bragged about doxxing Trump supporters, “anti-vaxxers,” and other societal rejects, one self-described victim has revealed, suggesting the aim is to turn the US’ national security apparatus against her targets.

            Brandy Zadrozny, an NBC feature reporter who specializes in ‘disinformation’ and ‘extremism’ on the internet, is teaching the world how she digs up data on her targets – from phone numbers and home addresses to property records and even Amazon wishlists – to expose their real-life identities. She recently shared her doxxing methods in an online textbook hosted by DataJournalism.com.

            But while this might sound like standard journalism practice, Zadrozny’s targets – who have recently included anonymous Trump supporters on Twitter – are private citizens who have committed no crimes, and exposing their real-life identities for allegedly posting “disinformation” is a not-so-subtle effort to turn them into enemies of the state, one such recent target, Revolver News reporter Darren Beattie, told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson on Wednesday.

            Very Disturbing Story

            Tucker Carlson & @DarrenJBeattie Expose NBC Reporter Whose Job It Is To Harass & Intimidate Trump Supporters

            Darren: “She will do everything she can to unearth anonymous Trump supporters, basically so she can ruin their lives.” pic.twitter.com/tSxwMNL3E9

            — The Columbia Bugle 🇺🇸 (@ColumbiaBugle) October 22, 2020

            “She uses state-of-the art-proprietary technical tools to dig up personal information about anonymous Trump supporters online,” Beattie told the Fox News host. “She’ll do anything she can to unearth anonymous Trump supporters – basically so she can ruin their lives.”

            Beattie revealed that Zadrozny’s “doxxing handbook” is sponsored in part by Bellingcat, the notoriously partisan ‘open-source intelligence’ outfit that, in turn, is backed by the US’ National Endowment for Democracy. It’s also funded by Google, a military contractor in its own right, and the European Journalism Centre, which counts such oligarchic bogeymen as George Soros and Bill Gates among its financial backers. So much muscle behind the doyenne of doxxing would be enough to give anyone who’s ever tweeted “wrongthink” pause, especially when her how-to guide describes how she has “identified people by connecting photos of things like cars, homes, or pets” in addition to profile photos.

            [SNIP]

            While Beattie and Carlson both called on NBC to denounce Zadrozny’s abusive tactics, the network responded by defending its employee, calling her an “incredible and meticulous reporter” whom they were “proud to call … our colleague.” Other colleagues stepped up to defend her and attack her accusers, painting the Fox News segment as a preemptive strike against an article Zadrozny was working on about Beattie’s site.

            Trained by oligarch-funded journalism outfit the Poynter Institute, Zadrozny shot to journalistic stardom in the past few years, making her name hyping Russiagate, denouncing pedophile hunters, and shutting down Facebook communities in which parents of autistic children swap tips about healing what they believe are vaccine injuries. The unifying thread running through her work, other than a fanatical devotion to pro-establishment narratives, has been reliance on social media deep-dives to learn more about her subjects without having to actually, well, interview them.
            –

  9. I’m thinking the main change needs to be that any social forum that gets to over a certain size becomes considered a public forum.

    The thing about 230 protection for smaller blogs is without it, smaller blog operators can be harrassed by dishonest parties, through posting copyrighted or illegal materials. And declaring small forums as public forums would allow troll armies to shut them down.

    We need to focus on forums will more than, say 1 million active members need to have some expectations of service.

    1. I think something like “presumption of good faith”– the thing that the Backpage attacks were attacking– where it’s better for a page to not take down a thing just because it’s been flagged that it MIGHT be illegal.

      1. I could see that, though what I would be more worried about for the smaller blogs is what would allow them to manage troll storms? Currently they can be banned under the “my house” doctrine, but converting everything to a public forum causes issue with that.

        1. The big difference is that people aren’t going to facebook to read The Writing Of Facebook; they’re going to Facebook because Facebook says “Hey, you guys, this is a place you can share your writing stuff.”
          They explicitly set themselves up as a forum, not a content provider.

          Folks do come here to read Sarah, although we’ve built a community. She’s a content provider. Ditto, say, New York Times, or group blogs.

          Exercising editorial control means you’re nolonger a host, you’re involved. It’s like how most forums require the mods to not be involved in discussions they’re moderating.

              1. Gab’s Andrew Torba says he thinks repealing S 230 is what Big Tech wants, largely due to lawfare attacks. Enforcing 230 as it was written (the chair of the FCC commission is working on that) would be the best solution. You publish/censor/abusively edit, you lose the protection. You leave it alone, you are covered.

                1. They want to get rid of it for the same reason they pushed “net neutrality”; so they can take over Verizon. Comcast, AT&T, etc., and gain even more power and control over the market.

                  They would also use it as justification for even more censorship by claiming their censorship is due to need to avoid potential legal liability for slander, etc.

                  The problem is that Sect 230 expressly protects platforms, not publishers, and courts have once again tortured language to define platform to include publishers.

            2. The law cannot minimize lawfare opportunities because, in the end, lawfare is not about the rule of law. It is about the opposite.

              The fundamental issue is good faith and trust. Once a certain percentage of society refuses to act in good faith and be trustable, society can no longer use things that rely on good faith and trust. The rule of law is one of those things. Once you cross that threshold, arbitrary power becomes the only functional management tool.

              What is that percentage? I don’t know, but it’s not a majority and could be as low as 10%. It also matters who those people are. If 10% of your society rejects it, but they are all petty criminals like shoplifters and thieves, you might survive. If it is only 5%, but it is made up of key national politicians and public servants (say, most of Congress and all of the FBI), then you’re screwed.

              Right now, if we’re not across the critical threshold of “people with power refusing to act in good faith and be trustworthy,” we’re on the edge, as the actions of FB, Twitter, and USA Today demonstrate.

              Edit: Grammarly says this sounds optimistic.

              1. I highly doubt the ability of human beings that want power to *not* eventually abuse it if it benefits them.

                Similarly, I believe it is equally possible for the Wrong Man to do the Right Things because it benefits him. There can not be only stick. There must be carrot. I get how we got where we are with such things, mostly.

                On a slight tangent, I also don’t believe we need heroes as such to “guide us” as the left is so fond of pushing. The American spirit cannot be led thus. Good examples, bad examples, we take ’em. But one does not “lead” Americans.

                This is why I’m very much in favor of proper law enforcement and prison reform. Because if you *arrest* the law breakers both great and small, and follow the law, that does several very good things. Stability. Which helps the economy, in addition to the social good of violent (and non-violent) criminals… not doing those things because they are not *in* greater society once they are caught, for a time.

                Tort reform and loser pays are worth looking in to, also.

                  1. *grin* I suspect it does.

                    My view is that the concept of freedom tends towards more of a “stand alone complex” for those that truly cherish it. Meaning we seek out our own sources and respect the actions and ideas of others, even emulate them, but we do not follow leaders in the way that those on the left mean it to be.

                    That being followers that shut up, get in line, and don’t ask too many questions. Not a very good definition of leadership, is it?

                    That’s the idea I was kicking around (and I put it poorly, re-reading that). When folks around here used to say that democrats long for the days of the plantation, when black folks knew their place, well, that’s part of it. By the way, you know they are trying to repeal the civil rights act in California? Kinda tipping their hand there.

                    Leadership on the left doesn’t have much concept of leading by example. There is very little delegating responsibility. Shifting blame, sure. But responsibility and freedom are two sides of the same coin, and the latter interferes with their grasp of power. So they don’t encourage that.

                    When I hear folks talking about politicians as “leaders” it doesn’t sit well. Because damn few of them have the slightest idea about it, and those that have ideas are mostly bad ones. You get enough political “leaders” often enough over the years, and see how they use the term, it grates. I do not elect “leaders.” I vote for representatives.

                    And complain a lot when they fail to represent my interests accurately, which happens often enough. Occasionally get a response. Most politicians don’t take kindly to being told to quit wasting money that ain’t theirs and never will be, or that the power they want ain’t theirs to have and never will be, or to represent their districts and not the interests of random strangers in the capitol building lobby.

                    Which is all to say that I don’t believe much in electing leaders, and that personally I’m not much of a follower in any sense. A rather different thing than what I originally said.

              2. Very optimistic. Reflect that pretty much every public school teacher/admin and most of the private school ones are some flavor of SJW / union indoctrinator. That will get you past 10% without breaking a sweat.

    2. The core issue becomes, are the Social Media giants forums or publishers. If they strongly edit for content, they are publishers, and should be subject to the same legal hazards as other publishers. That won’t work with their business model.

    3. We have dealt with “natural monopolies” before. The “social network” is no different from the phone network, or the electrical grid. It only makes sense to have one of each. The solution is more than a century old: make it a regulated monopoly, with a regulated maximum profit (6%?). The regulations include “common carrier” rules that forbid them from discriminating among customers for any reason, including censorship.

      The value of Zuckerberg’s stock will plummet once Facebook becomes a utility with exactly 6% profit margin. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. Dorsey as well.

      1. Yeah, common carrier or publisher. Pick one and enforce it.

        Might be why they opted for a late obvious push for Biden. They have some data to forecast the election from, and there has already been some friction with Trump.

      2. I’m not sure I see the similarity. The monopoly on the telephone company was built on the undesirability of multiple sets of phone lines and easements for same. When the technology improved, single lines could carry more data, and microwave transmission eliminated the necessity of long distance cables, the monopoly was eliminated.

        The same logic applies to the electric grid; one set of wires per district.

        The social media do not require multiple sets of wires for multiple companies. I don’t think the ‘natural monopoly’ argument will hold water. And I’m not sure it should; bad as the private monopolies are, government administration strikes me as a recipe for the worst of both worlds.

        It seems to me that telling the Social Media giants, “You can edit for content, OR be protected from lawsuit. Not both.” is the way forward.

        1. Better still, just tell them that just like bakers or florists, they are public accommodations under the Civil Rights Act, required by law not to discriminate against Christians, men, or whites, and that disparate impact = discrimination.

      3. It really is not a natural monopoly however. It is a monopoly because they have been allowed to spend well over a decade using abusive practices to prevent any competition, and have done it in coordination with Google and Apple which control over 90% of the app market.

        Regulating them isn’t the solution. Breaking them up and hitting the senior executives of them, Twitter, Google and Apple with criminal RICO charges is how you deal with it. Guarantee you will get people flipping to avoid the potential for criminal asset forfeiture.

        1. How does RICO do anything? Looking at what Wiki says constitutes RICO related activities under 18 U.S.C. § 1961 – I don’t see anything that Tech Mór can be prosecuted on ….

          1. I agree about RICO. The issue is anti trust and the law on that’s very clear. RICO is bad law any way.

            1. Well, big tech is objectively pro domestic terrorist, but doing that without a counter terrorism investigation is probably a prosecutorial innovation, and Barr seems to be opposed to those.

            2. It is a bad law. I think civil forfeiture in particular is an unconstitutional abomination. But even criminal RICO is very broad and can be used and has been used to go after any group of people who conspire to commit a criminal act, well beyond the traditional scope of mafia style criminal enterprises.

      4. There might be temporary “natural monopolies” as it’s important to be on the same social app as your friends, but that doesn’t mean they will last forever. For example, in $ASIAN_COUNTRY somewhere in eastern Asia, THE social app to be on is Line, not Facebook. Oh, plenty of people use Facebook, but the guy you want to hire to do something around the house (plumbing, etc) is going to give you his Line ID so you can friend him on Line and he can message you with his ETA, and is going to look at you funny if you tell him you don’t have Line and can he send you a phone text message instead. And I’m hearing reports that Line is spreading in popularity among young people in the US, primarily due to Asian students who already use it back home and their friends to want to message them.

        So Twitter… may not have its current market-leading position (in the US, at least) for as long its leadership thinks it will.

    4. Ay major press entities “publishing” to social media — such as the NY Post, NY Times, Washington Post, etc. ought be held as liable for their content and thus exempt from platform restrictions. Thus the platform has no role in “protecting” the public from providers of such content, Section 230 or no Section 230.

      Platforms should NOT discriminate among such content providers. Users recourse is against the news provider, not the platform provider. OTOH, news providers, such as the NY Post, should have recourse against deplatforming by providers, as has happened with the Biden stories.
      –

  11. None the less, it looks like the democrats may have gamed us again. One of the first web headlines I saw this morning read something like; Early voting, why the Hunter Biden story doesn’t matter.

    The October Surprise just may be that all the criminal aliens, graveyard voters, vote harvesters, etc. voted already and have been counted thrice in October and, oddly enough, Camel and Slow Joe have won even before the hanging chads are counted and truckloads of Republican votes are lost in transit.

      1. Looking at the early voting and turnout for those voting now, it looks like there may end up being *massive* turnout. And from what I can tell, democrats are turning out, and in the lead in Ohio as of this morning…

        But they aren’t turning out *enough.* And if there is massive turnout, and they try to manufacture a win…

        …and there end up being more votes than *people…* (a real possibility, with what we saw in 2016)

        Then there will be *massive* controversy. Which I believe, helps Trump. Because his voters are more likely to vote *in person* and *on election day.* Which will make the fraud even more visible. And mail in votes, as a lower integrity method, will get tossed out more as people make errors and screw it up more, which harms Biden more.

        And they will call the election illegitimate. Again. And people will yawn and flip them off and they will try the courts- which again will favor Trump- and when they lose… Riots. Again.

        That’s one scenario. We shall see, come election day.

        2. “Then there will be *massive* controversy. Which I believe, helps Trump.”

          There is ample evidence that the primary goal of Democrats is delegitimization of the American system; a Biden win would be desirable for them but is not really relevant. All they want to is to “prove” America is corrupt. They’re already prepping to use the voting as cause for riot civil unrest in the event of a Trump win (and they’ll probably riot if Biden wins, to go by the way they destroy their cities following a Super Bowl, World Series or NBA championship.)
          –

      1. Why not? After all prone is the most accurate firing position.
        I hope that I am joking.

      2. Remember and spread the word: Left wing ballot boxes are guarded by plains clothes security. Non-lefty and mail bixes are being destroyed.

        If you do not have the option of live voting *and volunteering to poll watch* where you live, take the time to hand deliver your ballot to the prog the neighbor hood drop box. If you need to put a temporary Biden/Harris sticker on your car, do it.

        2. At least one ballot collection box in L.A. was set on fire yesterday. The ones that didn’t burn were destroyed in putting out the fire. The video showed soggy envelopes all over the sidewalk and washing down the gutter.

          I don’t blame the fire department. Their job is putting out the fire.

          1. Any info as to what neighborhood it was in? I wonder if the boxes were in an area that traditionally votes Republican.

    3. Ace has had a post or two on the early voting returns. The counts so far have not been encouraging for the Democrats.

      2. It shows in some of them.
        They act like they think they are not going to cover the margin with fraud and can’t up it anymore to ensure they win without it blowing up in their faces. I can only hope I’m reading that right. Locally the Biden signage has climbed a bit but the normal places for some are bare or have Trump signage (Boilermakers union sign in window places are now with Trump signs or flags)

        1. Trump signs are surrounded by sandbags and barbed wire to keep the enemy from destroying them.

          1. I suppose there are legal reasons to not have Trump signs rigged to trip wires setting off claymores. Perhaps if one buried a stink bomb with the Trump sign’s post separating contacts …
            –

          2. Up here, not so much.
            4 years ago one sign was a homemade “Someone stole my sign so here’s this one and others” anchored and hung out of reach.

      3. We did a very informal survey of signage on our summer travels. Indiana had, by far, the largest number of Trump signs/flags. Even Illinois had a few. What surprises me is the low number of signs for either candidate we saw in Mississippi and now in Alabama. There is a guy with a Trump Train banner in his pickup running around our town, though.

        Very few Biden signs anywhere we went. My spouse’s FB friends swear this is because Biden supporters “know,” if they put out signs the evil (fill in standard perjoratives) Trump voters will destroy them. Right.

            1. Surprising number of Trump signs here in NJ. Biden signs almost entirely in the rich neighborhoods, which makes perverse sense. Very high overlap between Biden signs and signs about SCIENCE. Had a fascinating conversation with a black guy yesterday and the Biden folk might be surprised at how middle class blacks vote.

                    1. Yeah, Mao having the sparrows killed and Lysenko pushing for socialist biology is only the half of it. Oh BTW, there are huge shortages of fresh food in China right now and only those with good social credit scores are getting it. Those scoring modules were built by American firms.

                      This year’s harvests everywhere else but China broke records and food prices should have been dropping. they’re not. Problem for us, devastating for China. That’s why the establishment is so desperate, their masters in Peking are cracking the whip.

                    2. China’s food problems are one of the reasons why Trump was able to win the trade disputes with China. China still needs us more than we need China, and Trump wasn’t afraid to use that to his advantage. Ironically, using it to his advantage was primarily aimed at bringing a level playing field to trade relations between the US and China.

          2. Oddly very few Biden signs in my neck of the woods in taxachusetts. Lots of the dumb “We believe in Blah” and “Hate Has no Home here” virtue signalling but few Biden signs. Number of Trump signs also less than last time. I think either folks are 1) tired of this nonsense 2) unsure of safety from the “other side” 3) assuming no one could ever vote for Trump. North shore Massachusetts wanders from red to blue, Suburbs are traditionally more conservative, Cities solidly blue. Suburbs have been in flux last decade or so as the super wealthy have been leaving Boston and the fancy inner suburbs (Cambridge Somerville, Allston, Brighton, Newton) and contaminating the suburbs and exurbs.

        2. My spouse’s FB friends swear this is because Biden supporters “know,” if they put out signs the evil (fill in standard perjoratives) Trump voters will destroy them. Right.

          Projecting harder than a 12 screen IMAX theaterplex.

        3. “Biden supporters “know,” if they put out signs the evil (fill in standard perjoratives) Trump voters will destroy them. ”

          Biden supporters know a great many things that just ain’t so.
          –

          1. Every ‘Trump 2020’ sign should come with sandbags and barbed wire to prevent enemy sabotage.

    4. I saw that, I think Kruiser let the AP get into his head. The early voters are the ones least likely to change their minds anyway.

  12. Posted at The Phantom Soapbox.

    Everybody has a computer, right? Who do these morons think is out here? Goat herders living in mud huts? I am amazed at the level of stupid on display this week at Google, Facebook and Twitter.

    And by the way. For those inclined to despair, just as everybody has a computer, everybody has a gun. And a car. When -everybody- has a gun and a car, you can’t have a Communist-style takeover.

    You can have a mess, don’t get me wrong. It would be ugly. But it can’t go along like the usual peasants-interned-at-gunpoint bullshit we are familiar with from Europe.

      1. Yes, those people do exist, just as the ones who think the internet is only gambling sites and fail videos on YouTube.

        How many of them are there? A majority? If that were true, society wouldn’t function.

          1. If the technical issues weren’t apparent to everyone with exposure to programming and to mechanics/mechanical engineering, the self driving car thing would be a fundamental security issue for those exact strategic reasons. Interfering with operation, whether through compromise by cracking or deliberate design intent, gives all sorts of utility for organized murder. Then there are the surveillance issues.

              1. I knew it would happen as soon as I saw, I think maybe on your blog, that Tesla included wireless updates at all.

                I frankly feel that there is a moral obligation to investigate and expose the implications of these security issues.

                Just, not enough to make everyone do it.

              3. When those smart tire pressure sensors came out, someone did a proof of concept and took over a car via the tire sensors’ wireless … and were able to control the brakes, from about ten feet away. No doubt the tech is more powerful now…

                So keep that primitive old clunker, and keep it running. The day may come when that clunker means freedom.

                1. 1964 Buick Riviera. 425 Nailhead. Pulls like a train. ~:D No “summon” command. 2008 was a good year to buy old cars.

                  Maybe 9mpg though, so it does have its downside. Automobile technology has come a very far way since then. My crew cab produces less pollution driving down he road at 70mph than the Riviera does sitting still and turned off in the garage. If you drive down the road behind it you can smell the 1960s.

          2. Everybody has a phone, too. And consider that cell towers can be cut off from the rest of the telephone network and set to work routing local calls. (I couldn’t do that, but I know at least one person who could.)

            So now you have the three necessary conditions for an effective modern insurgency. Guns, mobility and communications. And you have it EVERYWHERE, not just one troublesome spot.

            I would not want to be the guy in charge of attacking that. Win or lose, it would be ugly.

            1. Most hunters have hand radios, too, and know how to use them. Hunters figure out to have a PLAN for when someone else is on the channel they want to use, and “go one up” doesn’t cut it. 😀

              1. Never spent much time fiddling with radios, but I do remember most of the army radio stuff they yelled into us. Most important of which was: “don’t say anything on the radio you don’t want an officer to hear. Because they can hear you.”

                1. *grins*
                  Take that problem, spread it over 25 bands, put in at least a dozen different hunter groups who are all looking for the same thing– Big Bucks– and add in dumb jokes and personalized references for the area.

                  Biggest change would be that you’re TRYING to shoot the other guys in the area….

                2. Which is why the Wehrmacht had a faceplate engraved with “The enemy is listening” on every radio.

            2. The cellular phone is a tracking device. It’s part of how the cellular system *works*, so the towers can talk to it so you can receive an incoming call. Smartphones added much more sophisticated tracking, but tower triangulation works on anything that connects to the system.

              Land lines and the internet still give a snapshot of your location when you use them. Oh, and USPS scans every piece of mail and makes the images available on the web; “Informed Delivery” is, of course, available to Federal agencies and the many “law enforcement” organizations officially. They can use fancier imaging to look right through the envelope and read at last some of the contents. Welcome to the 21st century. Oh, and the Fed still pays UPS employees to open your packages and report their contents. That one already went through the courts once; they’re not government employees, so it’s totally okay.

              That doesn’t mean none of those methods are useable, it just means that you need to be aware of what your exposure is when you use them.

            3. One of the things that the protestors in Hong Kong were using was an instant “offline” messaging app that essentially located the person you wanted to talk to by jumping from phone to phone using bluetooth until it found your “target”. It requires a certain phone density to work, and would be impractical beyond a certain radius. But within that radius, it’s effectively a way to get around the loss of the cell tower network.

          3. “In the world of the future, mobility… is the key to survival.”

            – voiceover for the trailer to “The Road Warrior”

        2. How many of them are there? A majority? If that were true, society wouldn’t function.

          Are we counting the ones who think of it either way “and that’s why I don’t bother”?

          1. The stupid, like the poor, are always with us. But the vast majority of people are functional adults who get their jobs done. Otherwise we’d be living in mud huts and smoking homegrown weed for entertainment.

            1. Give the left another generation of control of the school system and the mud huts and homegrown weed will be what we get; assuming that the Green New Deal doesn’t bring it about even earlier.

      1. Communist country. Gun ban in place for a long time. Everybody who had a car fled, if I recall the news (and if they didn’t lie like usual) the ones left are the poor and the stupid.

        1. I think I read of one family who set out in their SUV and made it the long way around and overland to the country in South America where the wife’s father had come from, and where they could claim refuge.

      2. Cars are only good if you have fuel for them. Democrats have made it very clear that they intend to only allow the ruling elite to be able to fill their gas tanks.

    3. FB and Twits double down with “No hacked/stolen/unverified etc and Oh by the by, we found via Trumps stolen tax records he has an account in a Chinese Bank!!!1!11”
      He also has an office there.
      both set up many years back for possible business but are empty and have been for years

      1. And it was a secret but we found it in his stolen tax documents … so the IRS knew ….. ummm …. but we will still lie and refuse to cover the non stolen Biden documents because ….umm ,,, Shut up they explained.

      2. FaceBook and Twitter have buildings that will burn just like any other. Something to remember, especially if Biden “wins.”

          1. Tulsi Gabbard had her Google ads shut down right after the first Democratic debate.

            The explanation provided was that an algorithm incorrectly identified the sudden surge of interest in her following the debate as an attempt to artificially generate “clicks” on her ads.

    4. And with a Raspberry Pi and a satphone, even goatherders in mud huts can have Internet . . .

      1. it is surprising where a sat phone is no longer needed. SpaceX/Elon are working on it so that to not needing any phone is getting closer, and closer. Just a simple SBC and touch screen will soon be about all that is needed.

    5. Which is why they want to ban private ownership of guns and cars (via the Green New Deal). They KNOW that to achieve their totalitarian dreams they need to take self defense and mobility away from the people’s faces they forever intend to stamp their boots on .

  13. It’s clear that it’s not only Big Tech that’s ignorant of the Streisand effect, but also legacy media.
    I’ve been lucky. The only time I got a USA Today in a hotel was when I was in Portland on a business trip in the ’80s. Neither the Hilton nor their Homewood Suites in Medford, OR provide them paper, though they’ll have the local rag for sale in the lobby. Not many takers, too..

    This might be demographics. Both places have a lot of transient business people during the week, including sales reps and various tradesmen, along with people on medical trips. (Lots of eye practices and a big regional hospital nearby.) Before COVIODiocy, there were many recreational stays on the weekend, though there was some in late August.

    1. Pre Internet, USA Today had the best baseball box scores. It’s the same reason I used to pick up the Herald Tribune when I was bouncing around the world. Don’t watch much sports ball at all anymore except the Gaelic games and the rugby and even the rugby is getting boring now that it’s professional so all the players have tattoos and trashy WAG’s with fake boobs,

  15. And sometimes the newsies and twitiots pull a thing that makes you just want to let the world go burn, even though they’ll burn down my house too.

    The problem of course, is that they’ve built a shrine to rage and ego that won’t be sated so long as there are people on the earth, and they are totally happy to drag everyone back to the stone age with them.

  16. There was a page exposing Scientology (that is apparently still up) that had an entire section called “Operation Foot Bullet.” As it happens, one of the biggest breach of their secrecy came about because they sued to keep things secret—which put the documents in the public court records. Oops.

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  18. Has anyone responded to a Democrat with “Since when has Hunter Biden been a Russian asset?”

  19. I just saw two people in Minneapolis, wearing masks, standing well apart from each other, tell a reporter they were voting for Harris-and-Biden ‘to bring us back to normal’ — while standing in the middle of a block of looted, boarded-up buildings.

    I wanted to shake them both until their teeth rattled. “What the hell have you idiots been SMOKING?!
    ———————————
    Biden is no more in control of this campaign than the monkeys we used to send up in experimental rockets.

    3. From Her Highness Whitmer, on “Meet the Press,” 18-Oct:
      “And if you’re tired of lockdowns or you’re tired of wearing masks or you wish you were in church this morning or watching college football or your kids were in-person instruction, it is time for a change in this country, and that’s why we’ve got to elect Joe Biden.”
      https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meet-press-october-18-2020-n1243845

      About halfway down the transcript…

      Sooo…
      You’re saying if the “right” person gets the Presidency, all of a sudden all those (unconstitutional) Executive Orders and mask mandates will just go away? Kids will be sent back into schools? So, COVID will suddenly stop being this horrible “it’s going to kill us all” (even though, it’s been probably as bad as a bad influenza season?) and just…
      Stop?

      There are no words for this.

      1. Yes there are.

        So Whitmer is already willing to concede that it was election shenanigans?

        So, China is suddenly going to stop releasing bioweapons once their puppet regime is officially in power?

  20. Pingback: You Can’t Stop The Signal, Mal – Tangled Threads Publishing
  21. Pingback: You Can’t Stop the Signal, Mal. – The Writer in Black

  23. Here’s proof supporting Joe’s claim that no “dirty money” has come his way:

    Laptop connected to Hunter Biden linked to FBI money laundering probe
    The FBI subpoena of Hunter Biden’s computer and hard drive came in connection with a money-laundering investigation, according to documents obtained by Fox News.

    The 2019 papers were verified by multiple federal law enforcement and government officials who reviewed them, but it’s unclear whether the investigation is directly related to the Democratic presidential nominee’s son.

    The documents were signed by FBI Special Agent Joshua Wilson, who did not immediately respond to Fox News’ request for comment. …
    –

    1. But it’s not “money laundering” when *they* do it!

      If Uncle Joe has really been raking off 50% of the income of his clan, there are some accountants the spotlight should light up as well. We’re talking tens to hundreds of millions of dollars they’ve popped in and out of existence. The GAAP is remarkably flexible, but not *that* flexible…

      With more than one person involved, that also checks the “RICO” and “criminal conspiracy” boxes. If it was anyone else, the FBI would have multiple SWAT teams kicking in doors while the media filmed the raids.

      1. The FBI only does the SWAT team thing in front of the media sometimes, like to embarrass or intimidate opponents of the Deep State or when they need some press. Most of the time it isn’t that theatrical. Of course, it may not be all that competent, either.

        When somebody in the Air Force used regular email to send classified info to somebody in one of our offices (he was cleared for the info, but it should NOT have been sent via regular email), the FBI didn’t burst in with guns. Instead a FBI agent waltzed in to the office, flashed a badge and warrant, yanked the server out, and walked out with it. Of course the server was actually the file server, and he didn’t actually shut it down but just yanked it out, damaging it and shutting down the office’s work for a couple days. The actual mail server was located hundreds of miles away in a data center. Later that day a more competent agent showed up at the data center and worked with the server team to shut down and remove the mail server in a controlled manner.

  25. Waited a day then stuck a link to Glen’s article in Politics over at Baen’s Bar.
    That has a fairly large following, so one more small step in opposition to censorship.

  26. Gotta love the way the media is trying to spin Hunter’s foibles as having nothing to do with the fitness of his father to be President. And then complain that screaming about nepotism of the Trumps is exactly the same thing as undermining foreign governments with quid pro quo deals to enrich your family.

  30. Ok, if I understand the social rules around such things, I now have the right to be a complete and unremitting asshole to anyone who hasn’t voted. At least I think that is how it is supposed to work.

          1. I do continue to have Questions with a capital Q (this keyboard doesn’t have the ornate beginning-of-chapter capitals….). But I will wait until after Trump wins.

            Too many black dogs in the area; I don’t need to add any more.

          2. More seriously; that sort of browbeating was one of the major reasons in the No column. Anything from “F***-off, you don’t get to tell me what to do”, all the way up to “If you had a good reason you would give it instead of engaging in monkey games”.

            Even after choosing it is despite the monkey games, not because of.

              1. Normally I’d say that my vote is utterly meaningless on a political level….. but this is 2020. The year that Illinois might even be in play.

                  1. The difference is:
                    National Socialists blame cosmopolitan capitalists
                    International Socialists blame provincial capitalists

                2. Every vote makes a difference. Library article in town, voted down for 10 years, finally passed, with a single vote. But what people forget, is it takes votes to get you to that position. You are NOT alone in a life boat in the middle of an empty ocean (as much as the Prog-Socs want you to think so.) You are a loosely linked team of like-minded individuals building a human pyramid to reach those dangling fruits. Only one can be at the top, but everyone else is absolutely essential.

                  DO NOT MAKE THE MISTAKE OF THINKING YOUR VOTE DOESN’T COUNT!

                  1. DO NOT MAKE THE MISTAKE OF THINKING YOUR VOTE DOESN’T COUNT!

                    I think you missed the Illinois part 😉

                    But I decided to vote for reasons entirely separate from any hypothetical effect it could have. Only afterwards did information start appearing that threw Illinois’ position into doubt.

                    1. Even in Illinoying, your vote means one more they have to manufacture.

                      And because they know how many they’ve manufactured, it conveys how many Illinoians aren’t buying what they’re selling.
                      –

                    2. Even in Illinoying, your vote means one more they have to manufacture.

                      This is true. But I’d guess that it is easier to create a fake vote than a real one once you have the infrastructure for it.

                      And we have the strategic underwater ballot reserve.

            2. Realistically – if one really does not have enough information to make a decision, voting [randomly] would be silly.

              It is probable that the people who gave you grief for not voting were assuming that you would have voted “their way.”

              In one sense, that’s kind of nice, in that they saw you as “my kind of people.”

              No need to belabor the “OTOH” to that.

              Big picture: It is possible for other people to hold political positions adjacent to your own without having arrived at those positions by a process that you [generic “you,” here!] would recognize. People!

              1. Few “gave me grief”, because I know better than to express doubts heresy in conservative forums.

                The exception (here) doesn’t count because I gave everyone else plenty of grief first.

    2. Being an asshole is always a right.

      The wisdom, utility, advantage, morality or tactical benefit are what are in question.

  31. Instant Reaction?

    Surprising Poll After Debate Is Good News for Trump, Trouble for Biden With Critical Voter Bloc
    President Donald Trump definitely came loaded for bear in last night’s debate and it was a barn burner of a debate. Meanwhile, Joe Biden was Joe Biden, trying to stay afloat, lying repeatedly, but not completely crashing.

    [SNIP]

    President Donald Trump definitely came loaded for bear in last night’s debate and it was a barn burner of a debate. Meanwhile, Joe Biden was Joe Biden, trying to stay afloat, lying repeatedly, but not completely crashing.
    Donald Trump . . . . 69%
    Joe Biden . . . . . . . 18.7%

    CNN, naturally, declared Biden the winner.
    60% Biden
    28% Trump

    But the poll that actually raised a lot of attention was Telemundo. The Spanish speaking station themselves seemed surprised. Trump absolutely crushed Biden in their Twitter poll, 66% to 24%.
    –

    1. I am hearing that WGN has a poll on tonight’s debate finding 74% think Trump won, 19% think Biden did.

      Of course, what matters is not the instant reaction, it is the vulnerabilities a debate exposes and the opposition’s ability to exploit those.
      –

  32. Laugh of the day and it isn’t even one a.m.

    Washington Post opinion piece* by one of their reliably mindless columnists:

    Are we okay with being child kidnappers?
    By Eugene Robinson

    *No, not giving them a link.
    –

        1. I’m missing the part where 500 children who’s parents they can’t find isn’t proof that Trump was right on this….

          –
          I know! President Trump explicitly said that these kids came across with coyotes paid to bring them across, not with their parents. Biden said “no, no, it was their parents”. When Trump said they were trying to find the parents. Didn’t go far enough, or got cutoff, from saying if those that did come across with their parents, then they would have been reunited because they could be found. The rest don’t want to be found. I mean it is a huge implied. But still …

          2. Dorothy: “What would you do with a brain if you had one?”

            Clearly, in some cases, the answer is “Nothing.”

          3. Might be lying sons of bitches.

            Is Tapper is so panicked by group psychology with a bunch of ninnies that he is willing to spend his carefully husbanded credibility for Biden, or does he feel personally threatened by some of the investigations?

            My vague recollection was that on the big anti Milo push, Tapper was one of the sources that I treated as having credibility.

            So, I now really wonder about his handwringing over QAnon, and the oppo dropped with regard to a known junkie womanizer.

            Yeah, there is the stupid explanation.

            But we have children trafficked illegally into the country, possibly to be sexually abused. And we have some really persistent insistence on permitting that activity, that happens to be insisting on other abusive and grooming behavior towards children.

            I have a genuinely hypothetical question, about a result of testing this notion, that I will not state.

  33. Trump missed the most important question:

    “Did that computer belong to your boy Hunter? ALL the evidence shows it did.”

    1. they’re not denying it. They’re just saying it doesn’t matter. Some asshat linked me on fecesbook on “this doesn’t matter. What matters is this list of Trump “scandals.”” (Yes, made up bullshit.)

    2. Because, you know, the potential president is owned by China? No big. But look, TRUMP did what any billionaire does and minimized his tax-debt.
      Yeah. middle fingers aloft!

  34. I’ve also got an answer to Biden’s “Everybody has a Right To Health Care!”

    Oh, you poor deluded fool. You clearly do not understand the concept of rights. Specifically, YOU do not have a ‘right’ to compel OTHER PEOPLE to pay for YOUR health care.

    It’s a misconception common among you left-wingers, that some people have a ‘right’ to the labor of others, but YOU ARE ALL WRONG. Whether you actually use the word ‘slavery’, or give it another name, like ‘socialism’, the notion that some people must labor for the benefit of others is an ancient evil that we have still not managed to eradicate. Seeking to enslave everybody, rather than just those of a certain skin color, does not make the practice any more acceptable.

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